The RFP Lifecycle Maturity Model breaks “pretty good” into parts you can act on. On 27 October, Michéal, VP of Marketing at VisibleThread, and Kyle Peterson, who leads account strategy and customer success, launched it in a live, interactive webinar. Kyle is a former contracts manager whose team works with everyone from Fortune 500 aerospace and defence contractors to 8(a) IT services firms.
This was not a webinar of slides and talking heads. Attendees answered ten anonymous live polls, saw the room’s results on screen, and argued with us in the chat. Below is what the model measures, how the room answered, and what Kyle recommends doing next.
The live poll results are as shared during the session. We’ve also drawn on a post-webinar survey, in which attendees answered the same ten questions to get their stage.
The model: six dimensions, five stages
The model grew out of the question Kyle hears most from customers: how are my peers doing this? He heard it often enough to see a real appetite for benchmarking, so he set out to map how GovCon growth teams mature, function by function.
The key word is layered. As Kyle put it, it’s not “one software tool to rule them all,” and it’s not one more procedures document either. Your stage is a composite of six dimensions:
- Opportunity readiness: the work before pen hits paper. Requirement shaping, customer relationships, Black Hat reviews. “If you’re responding once an RFP drops, you’re already behind.”
- Process and workflow: how the work actually gets done, from trip reports to bid/no-bid to the basis of estimate. Is it consistent, standard and scalable, or pockets of excellence?
- Technology and tools: how you equip the team, especially with AI. Where are tools used, how are they governed, and are they used at all? This is where RFP automation and AI-driven tender management sit: which steps are automated, who governs them, and whether the output can be traced back to source.
- People and roles: maybe the most important dimension. Winning a big RFP is cross-functional, so roles blur. Does each SME even know they’re about to be pulled in?
- Visibility and metrics: where every in-flight pursuit sits, why you won or lost, and whether that feeds future bids.
- Risk and compliance: avoiding the back-breaking misses, from a Section L gap to a FAR clause that never got flowed down.
Your answers place you on one of five stages:
| Stage | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| 1. Ad Hoc | A scramble to get the bid out without missing a major requirement. The goal is to stop losing on technicalities. |
| 2. Emerging | A decent baseline that relies on heroics: one or two people who carry everything in their heads. That becomes a bottleneck as volume grows. |
| 3.Standardized | The typical shop. Compliant, solid bids, and ready to improve at the margins with shorter cycles and more time to polish discriminators. |
| 4. Managed | Strong visibility. You know which pursuits drive margin and where every B&P dollar goes, and decisions run on data, not volume. |
| 5. Strategic | Repeatable, scalable processes driven by visibility and governed, AI-enabled tech, with feedback loops throughout. |
Kyle was careful to say no stage is “bad.” The point is a benchmark and a target. His team’s work with customers is moving them from Stage 2 or 3 toward 4 and 5, one dimension at a time.
What the polls revealed
The room was most mature on process and roles, and most divided where proposals meet contracts. The post-webinar survey tells the same story: teams rate themselves highest on catching risk, and lowest on how they handle contract redlines.
Post-webinar attendee survey, completed responses, October 2026
Win strategy: the work is happening, but it isn’t shared
We opened by asking when teams build their win strategy and discriminators. About a quarter of the room said after the RFP drops. Just under half said sometimes early, depending on who’s running the pursuit.
Kyle wasn’t surprised. In larger, more siloed organizations, he says the early thinking usually is being done. “Where I see organizations fall down is we’re not weaving it.” Win themes stay with BD instead of reaching the proposal team, the SMEs and the writers.
He read that middle answer as good news. “You’re already doing it. We just need to scale this.” His challenge to the audience: look at who on your team builds strategy early, and ask what makes them different.
The chat backed this up. One attendee described the frustration when BD arrives with positioning only after the RFP drops. Michéal agreed that it turns the proposal into a war footing, which never produces the best work.
Competitor research divides the room
Competitor research split the room fairly evenly, with a formal competitive review such as Black Hat edging ahead. Kyle stressed context: if you build stealth fighters, your competitive picture looks nothing like an IT services firm bidding for HHS. If “who” is obvious, ask “how” they’ll attack the bid.
He shared a favourite example: a healthcare user group that scanned Medicare RFPs and contracts for trademarked solutions, as clues to which competitors might bid. He also admitted he sat in maybe two formal Black Hat reviews in his whole pre-VisibleThread career. Many teams know the stages they should run, but delivery varies widely.
The bigger opportunity, he said, is making sure good competitive analysis reaches the wider team once you’re past bid/no-bid. One attendee noted their team keeps basic win themes running all year, which goes some way to closing that gap.
Process: the most mature dimension
On compliance review, over half the room had documented playbooks or compliance review embedded end to end, and nobody picked the bottom option. But 41% said a few people keep their own checklists, with nothing shared. That was higher than Kyle expected. “We have pockets of excellence,” he said. The work is scaling them.
Kyle called compliance table stakes. The question he hears more often now goes further: “If I’m making a claim in a proposal, whether Kyle’s making it or AI’s making it, how can I verify and substantiate that claim?”
Pre-submission review was the strongest result of the day. Around 60% run structured stages such as Pink and Red team. Nobody chose the top answer, a governed review cadence improved over time. Kyle’s test is whether learnings flow into the next pursuit. When a strong proposal loses, does all that content “disappear into the ether,” or is it harvested for reuse?
Michéal pointed out that this kind of continuous improvement was close to impossible five or six years ago. It was simply too manual. AI and better software now put it within reach. Kyle’s summary: most organizations know what should be done and why. “Adoption, training, consistency over time is hard.”
Contracts: where the room splits
Kyle called the contracts questions some of his favourites, as a former contracts manager. He framed them beyond page limits and margins: FAR flowdowns, data rights, NDAs, security and Service Contract Act obligations. FAR clauses set which terms must flow down to subcontractors, and GAO bid protest decisions regularly turn on whether a proposal met stated solicitation requirements, so missed obligations carry real cost. If you hit an SCA flowdown, is there a playbook that says what to do?
On the tools used to check compliance and contract terms, the room showed a real divide. 37% rely on manual read-throughs and Ctrl+F in Word, while almost 15% have connected, governed tools across the full lifecycle. Kyle defended some caution here. For something like classified data handling rules, “I wouldn’t AI that.” He also noted that contracts teams are often isolated from BD and capture until something forces a brake.
On redlines, around 30% track changes in Word and email them back and forth, and 43% have a defined process with one source of truth. “I do that myself,” Kyle admitted. Word isn’t the problem. The question is whether you can see every in-flight negotiation, and whether your SharePoint, CRM, CLM and proposal tools talk to each other. He called this low-hanging fruit.
The post-webinar survey sharpens the point. Word redlines were the single most common answer to that question. And among attendees who say they catch risk proactively or treat it as a strength, 4 in 10 still email Word redlines.
Roles: people know who does what
Two thirds of the room have clearly defined capture and proposal accountabilities, even where one person holds both. Kyle’s simple test: when an RFI or RFP lands, does everyone know who’s doing what, and do they know it themselves? For a one-person team, the harder question is whether there’s any time left for capture intelligence.
Metrics and debriefs: the loop that rarely closes
On tracking win rates and pursuit health, about half the room sits in the first three options, and some already run real-time dashboards. For those compiling reports by hand, Kyle said “manual is the operative word.” Automating it frees time for the analysis that matters. This is a practical use of RFP automation: dashboards that pull pursuit data automatically replace reports compiled by hand. He suggested segmenting win rates by fixed-price versus cost-type, by platform or by customer, and tracking pursuit health from gate to gate.
On win/loss, around 40% run a basic or standard debrief, but a “chunky quarter” keep it informal and undocumented. Kyle’s view: teams hold a debrief, find it enlightening, “and then it stops there.” The opportunity is a learning flywheel. Push for oral debriefs where you can, then record what you heard for everyone not on the call.
In the post-webinar survey, just one respondent said win/loss data feeds systematically into capture and Go/No-Go criteria.
Risk: caught, but often late
The final poll asked when teams catch compliance and contract risks. About 45% said before submission or signature, and about 40% said proactively or better. Kyle’s challenge to that 45%: “Is just before submission good enough?”
He described late risk discovery as the opposite of getting left: “We’re ready to submit and, oops, we catch something at the tail end.” With the government opening up nontraditional contracting structures, he argued contract strategy can be a differentiator, not just a control.
From the field: SMEs and traceability
Kyle has spent recent weeks in customer workshops in Huntsville and Los Angeles. His read is that the industry is still in the conversation phase, with teams getting tripped up on the finer points.
Two themes keep coming up. The first is SME time. One of VisibleThread’s largest customers told him content isn’t the problem. They need to “ruthlessly target and prioritize” SME writing assignments so experts get back to delivering work already won. The second is traceability: “How can I trust the output, and how can I continuously trace claim against source?”
Where teams landed, and what to do next
Each answer scores 1 to 5, so your ten answers add up to a total between 10 and 50. That total is your stage.
| Score | Stage | In short |
|---|---|---|
| 10 to 18 | Stage 1: Ad Hoc | Lives in people’s heads |
| 19 to 26 | Stage 2: Emerging | Good practice, not shared |
| 27 to 34 | Stage 3: Standardized | Holds on big pursuits only |
| 35 to 42 | Stage 4: Managed | Integrated and measured |
| 43 to 50 | Stage 5: Strategic | Shaping the opportunity |
In the post-webinar survey, nearly every attendee landed between Stage 2 and Stage 4. Stage 4 was the most common result, at just over 4 in 10, followed by Stage 3 at a third. Nobody has reached Stage 5 yet.
The single number matters less than the spread underneath it. As Kyle put it, a score shouldn’t just say “you’re a level three, good luck, win more.” Most teams are strong on one dimension and weaker on another, and that’s where the guidance lives.
His advice for when your results arrive:
- Sit with your score. Celebrate where you’re mature.
- Pick one dimension to improve in the next 30, 60 or 90 days.
- Name an owner. Teams usually know what to fix. The hard part is who has the time.
- Take it to the team. Use the results in a team meeting or quarterly off-site to have a candid conversation about where you stand.
- Use it to grow people. Let an ambitious team member own a piece, such as building a playbook. You solve a problem and build talent at the same time.
For a concrete starting point, the webinar deck suggests one move per stage:
| If you are at | Do this one thing | You’ll know in 90 days when |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 | Name one owner for compliance review. Use one shared checklist. | Every pursuit uses the same baseline method |
| Stage 2 | Write down what your go-to person already does, as a rubric and a template. | Every major pursuit has a logged outcome |
| Stage 3 | Apply PWin scoring and gate thresholds to every qualified pursuit. | Four in five pursuits have lessons learned on file |
| Stage 4 | Extend the review cadence past submission into award and modifications. | Contract reviews carry the proposal-side audit trail |
| Stage 5 | Bring in the pursuit types still working outside the governed process. | Nothing runs outside the connected toolset |
From the Q&A: making the case to a chief sales officer
The standout audience question was how to convince a chief sales officer that proposal process matters, when leadership doubts how the bid team spends its time.
Kyle sees the model as ammunition for that conversation. If you can show where your revenue-winning operation sits against peers, and pinpoint the people, process or tech behind it, you shift the discussion from “get more out the door faster” to how the team drives top- and bottom-line growth.
His practical tip: lead with numbers. Dollars won this year and pipeline influenced count, even for white papers and RFI responses with no direct revenue yet. Show the spread too. “Two to the US Army, two to Space Force, two to primes” says more than “12 RFI responses this year.”
Help us build version 2
We closed by asking where the model gets it wrong. Are the six dimensions the right ones? Is something missing? Should it be structured differently?
Kyle is proud of the composite variables, but he was clear: “You guys do this every single day.” If you think the model is missing something, tell us. Your feedback will shape the next version, and it will also settle a bet between Kyle and Michéal.
Find your stage
- Take the assessment. Ten questions, three minutes, scored across all six dimensions: Complete the survey.
- Get your stage report. It’s written for where you landed and starts at your stage, not Stage 1. It arrives as soon as you finish.
- Watch the full webinar. Including the live poll results and open floor discussion.
